OpenStack – Stackmastershttps://www.stackmasters.eu
Run the cloud with usWed, 03 Oct 2018 10:39:00 +0000en-US
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1 The importance of governance for cloud applicationshttps://www.stackmasters.eu/blog/governance-for-cloud-applications/
Tue, 18 Sep 2018 15:24:51 +0000https://www.stackmasters.eu/?p=2638How important is governance for cloud applications? The short and simple answer, in my humble opinion, is a lot. In fact, it can’t be emphasized enough. Governance is the act of policy establishment, continuous monitoring, and the separation of authorities and duties within a system. So, as a concept, it’s realized by identity and access […]

How important is governance for cloud applications? The short and simple answer, in my humble opinion, is a lot. In fact, it can’t be emphasized enough.

Governance is the act of policy establishment, continuous monitoring, and the separation of authorities and duties within a system. So, as a concept, it’s realized by identity and access management (IAM) services that are a cornerstone for any modern IT infrastructure or cloud application.

Cloud applications offer services to different users within the same platform. A property known as multi-tenancy, which is required for cloud applications. When cloud applications manage resources that belong to an organization or a team, you really want a governance model in place. Why? To regulate the access among the members of the organization on these resources, and how they are distributed and managed. It needs to be a key part of your overall cloud management strategy.

So how do we handle governance for cloud applications? Let me explain.

Governance for cloud applications our way

Here at Stackmasters, as a Python Developer, I get to design and implement a cloud application, which provides an API for cloud management. This software service automates recurrent routine tasks that occur in the management of a cloud environment. So things like the installation and configuration of an application stack (e.g. a web site) as well as whole workflows. Task automation, then, simplifies the cloud management for organizations and teams, and acts as a helping tool for cloud administrators and DevOps teams by allowing system changes through API calls in standard fashion.

Now, we want this API to be easily accessible from different clients – be it CLI’s or a front end client running on a browser, or just a shell. What do we need to achieve this accessibility? Simple, we need a service to authenticate the user and perform permission checking. At the same time, we need to keep usage statistics for different users.

For the implementation of this service, we use Role Based Access Control (RBAC) resource governance approach, which sets the ‘role’ as the basic authorization unit. We create roles by combining different permissions and we assign these roles to users or groups of users. Clever eh? Nope, just the right governance for cloud applications framework for us.

Find the right fit for your company

While there are many other resource governance methodologies and techniques, the above approach seems to be the right fit for our application. The reasons are simple, it is down to its simplicity and robustness. It is also logically close to the multi-tenant environments and governance models we have seen in many cloud technologies we use every day.

For example, OpenStack’s identity service: Keystone, which offers API authentication, service discovery and distributed multi-tenant authorization. This one is based on the idea that identification should be a separate, standalone and isolated service. Keystone’s architecture inspired me on designing our identity service. We have used some ideas, such as the way tenants are organized and used, acting as the base unit of ownership or the way user roles are applied to define the level of authorization rights.

Conclusion

The secret to governance for cloud applications is basically that there is no secret. It’s one of the central cogs in your system management in this modern age of digital transformation. It decides the policies you establish, the monitoring you will have in place, and separates authorities and duties within your system. Any modern IT infrastructure or cloud application worth its salt must ensure that they have the right governance in place. So, if you are not making it a priority already get on the case today!

The importance of governance for cloud applications was last modified: October 1st, 2018 by Panos Vlachos

]]>Join us for OpenStack’s 8th Birthday Celebrations!https://www.stackmasters.eu/blog/join-us-openstack-8th-birthday/
Tue, 17 Jul 2018 08:10:05 +0000https://www.stackmasters.eu/?p=2586It’s celebration time! OpenStack is turning 8 years old and if that doesn’t call for a grand get together of “Stackers” then we don’t know what does. Here at Stackmasters, as always, we will be inviting the OpenStack community in Greece to our shard office space at Starttech Ventures HQ in Athens to join in […]

It’s celebration time! OpenStack is turning 8 years old and if that doesn’t call for a grand get together of “Stackers” then we don’t know what does.

Here at Stackmasters, as always, we will be inviting the OpenStack community in Greece to our shard office space at Starttech Ventures HQ in Athens to join in the celebrations.

Here are the juicy details: all-comers are welcome to join us this Wednesday, July 18, from 19:00 – 21:00 at Starttech Ventures. There are still a number of open spots of the meetup, but they are going like hotcakes so RSVP here if you want to join the fun.

OpenStack: onwards and upwards

The Birthday meetup is an event we love to host each July. And it’s not just about celebrating the progress of the OpenStack project with those working with the technology, but to discuss best practices, tricks of the trade and a few zany stories that many of you often have.

Each year we share the latest news, trends and speculations of the OpenStack project with our local community members, as well as all its users. Additionally, we always welcome anyone interested in technology and the development of Open Infrastructure projects with open arms.

There are similar events organized by local OpenStack communities around the world in coordination with the OpenStack Foundation, so wherever you are you are sure to find one near you.

Athens OpenStack MeetUp Agenda

As is usually the case, it will be a laid-back affair. Here is the agenda of what we have in store for you:

18:45: Welcome and Introduction

19:00: 8 Years of OpenStack – Review by Thanassis Parathyras

19:45: Open discussion and call for future meetings

See you there!

As always, it will be our absolute pleasure to see those of you who have worked or want to get to know OpenStack better, as well as those who want to share the experiences you have with OpenStack and its greater community. A big shout out to the sponsors of the OpenStack Foundation, Stackmasters and Starttech Ventures.

]]>OpenStack Summit 2018: collaboration is everythinghttps://www.stackmasters.eu/blog/openstack-summit-2018-collaboration-is-everything/
Fri, 25 May 2018 13:12:30 +0000https://www.stackmasters.eu/?p=2557Spring is always a good time to visit Vancouver. But this week it’s extra special. Why? Because the OpenStack Summit 2018 is in town. This week I have been lucky enough to attend my 6th OpenStack Summit, this time happening in this great Canadian city. It’s remarkably beautiful, with plenty of nice parks, open spaces […]

Spring is always a good time to visit Vancouver. But this week it’s extra special. Why? Because the OpenStack Summit 2018 is in town.

This week I have been lucky enough to attend my 6th OpenStack Summit, this time happening in this great Canadian city. It’s remarkably beautiful, with plenty of nice parks, open spaces and one of the best waterfronts I’ve seen in a large city. Lots of places to take some time to breathe and reflect.

And it’s in one such oasis of calm where I’m writing this post from to share my experience and insights about where our industry seems to be going.

Actually my first experience of such a global event was in Atlanta, back in 2014, where I was accepted in the OpenStack travel support program. My eyes were well and truly opened on the project and its people. After that, a lot of traveling and learning has followed, in European cities like Paris and Barcelona, as well in Tokyo and Austin, with the former being the biggest technical IT conference I’ve ever participated in.

The keynote sessions where less noisy about how cool OpenStack can be this time round. The marketplace was also lacking the usual big marketing tricks to attract everyone’s interest. Nevertheless, it is still the biggest event in the Open Cloud Infrastructure and the ecosystem around it.

My personal take is that I prefer this kind of approach for such a high-end technical gathering. Why? It helps to promote the human communication paths, those connections which actually make things happen and continue to be the driving force for OpenStack.

OpenStack Defined Clouds

While the term OpenStack Defined Cloud is far from being in wide use, it’s my way of labeling everything I’ve seen over the last week. If I wanted to sketch out the outstanding role OpenStack plays in extending cloud to broad application coverage, I would stay it’s at the open source software contributed by the community.

However, the project itself and most significantly the key people in the community are evolving. In their expectations more than anything. They are actively looking forward and trying to enable more potential elements for everyone of interest in the cloud computing field.

Collaboration comes first

The new format of the OpenStack Summit splits out the sessions in various diverse tracks as mentioned above. This is a sign of maturity, which is the result of the actual exploitation of the project. OpenStack has a quite significant footprint in the IT industry. Many organizations are running their infrastructure on it and it services a diverse set of needs and verticals in the market.

Naturally, diversity calls for a segmentation in the focus according to the needs of the users. My main interest was around the Containers and the OpenDev CI/CD tracks. The place where the software lifecycle management is discussed, composing together with OpenStack’s extremely powerful tools to support the future of the digital economy. This would be the software infusion in our everyday life.

My take

So what’s the last word? I think, above all, the OpenStack Summit 2018 highlights how much the cloud has evolved. In both personality and actual use. Gone or the days or it being all about cloud glitz, glamour and coolness. As it matures, everything is now about being able to support a better software offering – for all of us.

For me, OpenStack embraces change, as it has the “Open” value in its DNA. And it responds to DevOps culture with invaluable results for the IT ecosystem.

See all you Stackers at the next open source event!

OpenStack Summit 2018: collaboration is everything was last modified: October 1st, 2018 by Thanassis Parathyras

]]>What to watch out for at the Sydney OpenStack Summithttps://www.stackmasters.eu/blog/sydney-openstack-summit/
Thu, 02 Nov 2017 16:03:13 +0000https://www.stackmasters.eu/?p=2435G’day, mate. How are you going? You may be wondering why we’re talking like an Australian. Well Strewth! The truth is, we’re pretty excited about the upcoming OpenStack Summit in Sydney. Sadly, a member of the Stackmasters team will not be on site this time round. It’s because as the Aussies might say, “we’re stuffed” […]

G’day, mate. How are you going? You may be wondering why we’re talking like an Australian. Well Strewth! The truth is, we’re pretty excited about the upcoming OpenStack Summit in Sydney.

Sadly, a member of the Stackmasters team will not be on site this time round. It’s because as the Aussies might say, “we’re stuffed” with a heavy workload. We’ll be watching from afar though. And with much anticipation and excitement about the latest news and trends coming out of one of our favorite events.

Latest from planet cloud

What is the OpenStack Summit? Put simply, it’s the definitive event for IT professionals – a three-day conference for IT business leaders, cloud operators and developers. It covers the open infrastructure landscape and is the world’s largest open source cloud computing gathering.

It’s aim is to give IT leaders and stakeholders the latest insights, knowledge and practical training for all things on cloud. Let’s face it, the cloud phenomenon continues to shape-shift its way into the #1 method of managing IT. If you ask us, Managed Cloud services are the present, and the future.

What to expect at OpenStack Summit

The reason for the above is pretty simple. The world now runs on open infrastructure. And this year in Sydney, the agenda is action-packed. There will be opportunities galore to learn about the mix of open technologies building the modern infrastructure stack, including OpenStack, Kubernetes, Docker, Ansible, Ceph, OVS, OpenContrail, OPNFV, and many more.

Things to watch out for

Irrespective of whether you are pursuing a private, public or multi-cloud approach, the OpenStack Summit is THE place to network, enhance your skill set, as well as plan your cloud strategy. There will be demos and presentations aplenty on new features in the Pike (current) release.

Looking at the agenda, there will also be absorbing keynote speeches with top professionals sharing real-life use cases and their experiences with OpenStack, as is usually the case.

Here’s our quick at a glance list of what to do while you’re there (and what to watch afterwards if you’re not there):

Key Keynotes

There’s a load of cool keynotes confirmed so far. We’re looking forward to hearing from Adobe pair Joseph Sandoval and Nicolas Brousse talking about “Lean infrastructure powered by OpenStack at Adobe Marketing Cloud” on the first day.

There’s also a topical talk about an issue which is very much on the global social conscience right now: climate change. Prof. Brendan Mackey, PHD, Director of Griffith Climate Change Response Program, and Professor Gary Egan, PhD, MBA, Director of Monash Biomedical Imaging will be discussing “Climate change, Brain and Imaging Research on OpenStack”.

There’s a boatload of other presentations, “lightning talks” and workshop-type sessions, so be sure to check out the full details of the schedule.

Collaborate at the forum

This year at the forum, the hot topic will be gathering feedback on the current release, Pike, and to start drawing up requirements for the next ones in line, Queens and Rocky. There will be a wide variety of sessions focused on enhanced agility as provided by the OpenStack services in order to support better containers integration and NFV applications.

Overall, as Tom Fifield points out, having all the Stacker community in one place (developers, operators and end users ), is a great chance for:

Strategic discussions – to think about the big picture, including beyond just one release cycle and new technologies

Cross-project sessions – in a similar vein to what has happened at past design summits. But with increased emphasis on issues that are of relevant to all areas of the community

Project-specific sessions – during which developers can ask users specific questions about their experiences. Users can give feedback from the last release and cross-community collaboration on the priorities and top ‘blue sky’ ideas for the next release

Multi-cloud on top

We think you’ll agree that there’s a lot to look forward to. We believe that an important aspect, which will come out of the OpenStack Summit is the rate of adoption growth, driven by the multi-cloud approach many companies pursue, in order to avoid vendor lock-in. As we all know, OpenStack is the leading open source private cloud technology. But it can also be combined with public clouds or even consumed on a Private-Cloud-as-a-Service model.

So, if you manage to get to Sydney for OpenStack Summit, follow our guidelines and enjoy the experience. If you don’t, then try to watch some of the recorded keynotes and content, which will be available one week after the big event.

“No worries”, then. And “good on ya”.

What to watch out for at the Sydney OpenStack Summit was last modified: October 1st, 2018 by Stackmasters

]]>Private cloud: not just for the big boyshttps://www.stackmasters.eu/blog/private-cloud-not-just-for-the-big-boys/
Wed, 09 Aug 2017 09:19:21 +0000https://www.stackmasters.eu/?p=2023Private cloud. “This is not for me”. “It is too complicated and expensive”. “It’s only for large or corporate enterprises”. Right? Wrong. The fact is that from the various types of organizations out there, it’s the small and medium-sized firms stand to reap the most benefits by switching to cloud. So what’s the problem? Why […]

Private cloud. “This is not for me”. “It is too complicated and expensive”. “It’s only for large or corporate enterprises”. Right? Wrong.

The fact is that from the various types of organizations out there, it’s the small and medium-sized firms stand to reap the most benefits by switching to cloud. So what’s the problem? Why don’t they? Basically. it comes down to knowledge. Very few (and we mean very) understand how it can help their businesses.

Open source removing cloud barriers

Open source software is removing barriers to starting a private cloud project, with the most prominent example of OpenStack. A vast community of larger or smaller enterprises and individuals, are working closely to produce cloud management software, for all types of environment sizes.

Arguably, the standout misconception about private cloud is that it’s all on-premise, hosted in a company’s data centre. While this can sometimes be the case, an ever-growing part is hosted in third-party hosting providers or provided as a managed service.

There are many benefits attached to this hosted cloud approach, apart from the obvious cost-saving and reduction in complexity.

The benefits of private cloud for SME

PERSONALIZED SERVICE: moving your IT infrastructure to a private cloud makes it more flexible and customizable in order to meet individual business requirements. And gain full control over a most critical part of your business chain.

ENHANCED SECURITY: you know exactly where the data centres storing your data are located and the security measures in place. As a private cloud consumer you control how data encryption, backup and disaster recovery policies are set and enforced.

Compact, not complex

If you stop to think about it, the most enthusiastic adopters of cloud computing – and the easiest businesses to sell it to – should be SME’s. That’s because they don’t come with the baggage associated with larger corporations. Things like legacy infrastructures and/or specialized systems which they can’t or simply don’t want to move into the cloud. In contrast, most smaller companies don’t have such deep-rooted and complicated IT. By nature, they should be much more open to the concept of cloud.

The cloud grows with you

Because the cloud is completely scalable, a typical SME can respond to higher demand coming from their users base without having to redesign and implement everything from scratch. As you grow, you can effortlessly add more on the resources size your cloud manages. In essence, the cloud grows with you.

Also, you have the perfect opportunity to start slowly and try a “see how it goes” approach. For example, why not start with simple, not mission-critical applications to establish a process around your own cloud tight with your business and people. Then you can evolve your cloud strategy to include all elements of the business, and thus achieve further efficiencies.

Going back to the cost factor, a major point to remember is that you don’t need to worry about
price drops, special offers and the pace your cloud bills grow, while your needs for IT resources grow, as you can control the amount of IT resources allocated for your business at standard operation and scale when needed either on ad-hoc basis with public cloud products or permanently scale up with your private cloud solution.

Challenges of private cloud for SME

Is all of the above too good to be true? Well, in a word, no. For an SME, moving to a private cloud is essentially easy. But it’s not without challenges (that would be too easy). And for the record, those are the following:

Expertise: lack of a technical team to carry out the project. As we are talking about cutting edge technology, it’s hard to find and attract the right people for the job. On the other hand, if you manage to engage with the right people then you essentially extend your human resources with highly-skilled and innovative voices.

Entry cost: the initial outlay may be higher than with public cloud. But in the long run you’ll see that this more than balances out and actually becomes more cost-effective.

On-site or hosted: build everything from scratch on your own or reach out to a managed service provider to jump start it. The latter, hosted private cloud, comes with an established team of experts to deal with all the technical details and a significant cost proposition, as you will be partnering with a professional offering that combines engineering and industry landscape awareness.

Your cloud. Your way.

In conclusion, at Stackmasters we all agree that the above challenges pale in comparison to the actual benefits for SME’s switching to private cloud. The most important thing is to find the right partner who will provide you with a high quality consultation. Then, in a very short time, you can get yourself a customized, private (or even multi) cloud solution designed to grow with your business.

And without wanting to blow our own trumpet, this is something we can help you with. A lot. Our managed cloud service offering will help you build, manage and scale your Stack.

Contact us for a free consultation and we’ll provide an assessment of your required infrastructure and a pricing plan to suit your needs.

Private cloud: not just for the big boys was last modified: October 1st, 2018 by Stackmasters

]]>Stackmasters partners with tripsta to build their OpenStack cloudhttps://www.stackmasters.eu/blog/stackmasters-partners-tripsta-build-openstack-cloud/
Fri, 25 Nov 2016 10:11:33 +0000https://www.stackmasters.eu/?p=778Stackmasters, the European OpenStack experts and Managed Cloud services provider, today announced its ongoing partnership with one of the biggest online travel agencies in Europe, tripsta, to develop an OpenStack based private cloud and related processes. The OpenStack based private cloud is going to host existing applications as well as to support the company’s software […]

Stackmasters, the European OpenStack experts and Managed Cloud services provider, today announced its ongoing partnership with one of the biggest online travel agencies in Europe, tripsta, to develop an OpenStack based private cloud and related processes.

The OpenStack based private cloud is going to host existing applications as well as to support the company’s software development teams to their cloud-native modern software architecture by leveraging open technology and efficient process models.

“The most significant step in order to adopt the cloud with success is made by companies where business and IT leadership is aware that their digital transformation is driven by more than the technology solution,” said Thanassis Parathyras, CTO of Stackmasters. “Tripsta, along with other companies we support in EU, digested the open technology and cloud initiatives to achieve agility and efficiency in their business objectives, and we ‘re excited to participate in the project for building the tripsta cloud.”

“Tripsta has long before embraced open-source software and understands its important role in cloud technology which allows both the operators team and the development teams to utilize company’s resources in order to develop and enrich our leading on line booking services,” said Yiannis Polizois, Systems Administration Manager at tripsta. “Making things happen, we first had to build a cloud infrastructure and setup the respective processes. With Stackmasters support we are able to iterate over several cycles resulting in defining the right strategy and select suitable technologies towards bringing improved performance for our business.”

About Stackmasters

Stackmasters is a Cloud Specialist company founded in 2014, uniquely combining years of technical and business experience in IT with the enthusiasm of a cutting- edge tech startup. Its founders are specialists in Cloud Computing and have been following the emerging paradigm since its beginning from all its aspects, wearing the hat of the provider, the consumer, the engineer and consultant, and, last but not least, that of the academic researcher. Stackmasters carries the legacy and technical expertise of Virtual Trip, the established Greek IT services company and technology incubator, and focuses on grid computing, distributed systems and architecture, virtualisation and open-source software implementations. View more

About tripsta

In 2005 two restless entrepreneurs founded a startup initially called travelplanet24 in the heart of one of the world’s travel hot spots, Athens Greece. Today our online travel agency, tripsta, is one of the largest and most recognized leaders in the industry. Our trusted brands, tripsta, airtickets®, and travelplanet24 are preferred by more than a million loyal travelers throughout the 45 global markets that we presently operate in. With offices in Athens, Bucharest and Istanbul our committed team of 280 passionate travel geniuses ensure that you reach your destination with guaranteed low prices and dedicated support.

Stackmasters partners with tripsta to build their OpenStack cloud was last modified: October 3rd, 2018 by Stackmasters

]]>Open source software in the modern data centrehttps://www.stackmasters.eu/blog/open-source-software-modern-data-centre/
Tue, 18 Oct 2016 10:13:08 +0000https://www.stackmasters.eu/?p=754There is an old quote that describes the progress of disruptive movements and technologies in this way: “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win”. Well, when it comes to Open Source in the data centre, we have been in the winning stage for quite a while […]

There is an old quote that describes the progress of disruptive movements and technologies in this way: “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win”.

Well, when it comes to Open Source in the data centre, we have been in the winning stage for quite a while now.

At 2000 they would have laughed at you for even suggesting this possibility. Heck, even back in 2005 most companies still relied on Microsoft for their enterprise data centre and SUN still sold overpriced hardware to run their proprietary OS on.

Yet, the writing was on the wall.

After all, you can’t beat server software that’s both free AND good, and Open Source software was (and is) both of those things. Especially when it comes to internet related services.

You see, on the enterprise desktop you can’t easily replace Microsoft. They write an OS that’s easy for the average Joe Employee to use, and they have all those de-facto standard Office programs that go with it (from Excel to Outlook Server). So you need to give employees and managers Windows, or at least Macs, to keep them happy.

On the data centre and on the Cloud, though it’s a whole other story. There you want reliability and speed. You want your OS to be able to fine-tuned to maximize resource utilization. And you don’t care for fancy GUIs that get on the way of automating operations. You want the technology — not a product and all the baggage that comes with it, like having to pay expensive licenses and subscription fees just for the great “privilege” of being vendor locked.

In other words, you want the performance, reliability and flexibility of Open Source software.

And this, folks, is why Open Source software conquered the data centre — getting an estimated 55% share of the server room, which goes even higher depending on the niche.

You would look very hard to find a company that doesn’t use at least one (and usually much more) Open Source projects at their data centres.

Heck, nowadays even the biggest companies like Google, Facebook and the like, run their data centres on almost 100% free software. Most of them even contribute back to the community too. Even Microsoft does so these days — the .NET Core and the CLR are not Open Source, as is their VS Code, their new programming editor and several other things besides. Microsoft sharing back? Who would have thought of it back in the day?

This culture of collaboration is one of the biggest assets of Open Source — why reinvent the wheel when you can work with others on building something bigger?

The large user base of Open Source platforms, means there are more eyes on the code, and multiple sources to provide feedback, documentation, tutorials, and support each other (some Open Source project forums are far better at providing timely support than some commercial software’s paid-for support departments).

But with Open Source you don’t have to give out on commercial support either. Only now you get to pick the company that will provide it to you — instead of being locked in to some commercial vendor’s support department.

Of course this is old news for us — and perhaps for you too.

Here at Stackmasters we have been believing in the power and the potential of Open Source for decades.

Which is also why we invested in OpenStack, the truly Open Source and vendor-neutral infrastructure solution for the enterprise Cloud.

We’re not alone in this, either. We are on train of one of the fastest growing Open Source communities in the world, with close to a thousand supporting companies, and dozens of huge success stories, from PayPal and Best Buy to Cisco, AT&T and Intel.

And, as happened with Open Source web severs, Open Source server OSes, Open Source databases, and Open Source virtualization, OpenStack — the Open Source Cloud solution — will prevail over all the vendor-locked commercial Cloud offerings.

Just wait and see.

Open source software in the modern data centre was last modified: October 1st, 2018 by Stackmasters

]]>Tip: Enable the new generation launch dialog in OpenStackhttps://www.stackmasters.eu/blog/tip-enable-the-new-generation-launch-dialog-in-openstack/
Wed, 17 Feb 2016 15:45:23 +0000https://www.stackmasters.eu/?p=417One of the most popular ways to manage an OpenStack cloud is through the Dashboard, codenamed Horizon. Although no one can argue the fact that it has improved a lot since the early days, there are still some things that need to be tweaked towards a better user experience. The launch instance dialog, for one, […]

One of the most popular ways to manage an OpenStack cloud is through the Dashboard, codenamed Horizon. Although no one can argue the fact that it has improved a lot since the early days, there are still some things that need to be tweaked towards a better user experience.

The launch instance dialog, for one, bugged me for a long time.

At its current release, it is good enough for small installations and will do the work. It also supports a significant subset of OpenStack services, but when your installation is filled with images, flavors and other resources, then using the dialog becomes a struggle due to the lack of search and sorting — and the limited number of drop down boxes (with existing ones only being useful for certain resources). There is also no easy way to compare two or more flavors and if you need to go through the details of one, then you’ll have to go back to the flavors menu.

In sort, things could be much better.

So, one day while I was exploring the local_settings.py file I noticed a pair of quite promising variable settings, as follows.

LAUNCH_INSTANCE_LEGACY_ENABLED = True

LAUNCH_INSTANCE_NG_ENABLED = False

Even though I haven’t been following all the latest developments in the Dashboard program, it looked as though the development team was working on something new. The first variable toggles the legacy launch instance dialog and the second one enables the new generation launch instance dialog. Note that you can have both buttons enabled or you can just enable only one at a time. Modify the variables as follows to get the new generation dialog:

LAUNCH_INSTANCE_LEGACY_ENABLED = False

LAUNCH_INSTANCE_NG_ENABLED = True

After you make the changes you must restart apache in order for the OpenStack Dashboard to reload the local_settings.py (and pay attention to the letter case, as the variable settings are case sensitive).

Image: Current and new gen launch instance dialog

The NG launch dialog is implemented with (popular JS framework) AngularJS and it has been introduced as an optional feature in Kilo. It has a whole set of new features like search, sorting, comparison views and adjustable cells to reveal all details about the listed resources just to name a few. You can take a more detailed tour of the new features here.

Tip: Enable the new generation launch dialog in OpenStack was last modified: October 1st, 2018 by George Paraskevas

]]>Cloud 9: a sysadmin meets OpenStackhttps://www.stackmasters.eu/blog/a-sysadmin-meets-openstack/
Mon, 01 Feb 2016 14:50:50 +0000https://www.stackmasters.eu/?p=384For the past 7 years I have been working as a head system administrator with a tech startup incubator. Mine is the (often thankless) job of ensuring that the data center runs smoothly and securely and that business software, application servers and development environments are working and available to our users. As our sysadmin team […]

For the past 7 years I have been working as a head system administrator with a tech startup incubator.

Mine is the (often thankless) job of ensuring that the data center runs smoothly and securely and that business software, application servers and development environments are working and available to our users.

As our sysadmin team is often overloaded with tasks such as
server provisioning and re-purposing, and network troubleshooting, the time left for engineering and improving upon the offered IT services is limited.

While this might be true in most IT environments, it doubly so in an incubator, where you need to manage all kinds of different development and production stacks that different startups opt for. Being able to respond quickly to the demands of all these agile teams — all growing and experimenting at the same time — can be really hard.

…and then things get really complicated

Working with many startups at the incubation stage, also means that a few of them will suddenly grow too large, too fast — and their IT requirements becoming substantially higher as well.

Legacy system administration wisdom and Perl mastery, while adequate for last decade’s data centers, won’t really help us here. The only way to address this kind of demand is by adopting advanced high availability solutions, coupled with a full disaster-recovery plan.

And while many traditional sysadmins fear the cloud, in my opinion, the move from in-house hosting to cloud-based solutions has been a great enabler in the delivery and operation of more advanced systems.

Server virtualization, monitoring tools and linux clusters have been part of our everyday job for a long time now, giving us the opportunity to respond to highly customized needs.

Efficiency and time to delivery have been two of the most critical aspects we had focused to improve.

Enter OpenStack

The last few days I had the chance to experiment with and learn about the internals of OpenStack, which is a new approach to building your IT infrastructure, and comes with solutions to a lot of the aforementioned problems baked in.

OpenStack, at its core, is a set of software tools for building and managing private and public clouds.

It’s like your own private Amazon AWS or Google Compute Engine, offering a “drop-in” replacement for public clouds, at least the way I had experienced them so far.

As an old-school system administrator, what impressed me about OpenStack is that it extends resource management over to storage and network — that is, going beyond the CPU and memory management options that you get with the typical virtual machine offerings.

Having a unified view of your computing resources utilization, and having the ability to manage it from a single place is a very powerful feature. And it’s especially mind blowing, even to an old hat like me, raised up on the CLI, that you can access all that power from an easy to use web-based UI.

The ease of creating images and customized flavors of your virtual machines, allows you to deploy a new server in minutes without having to repeat trivial configurations all over again.

Heck, you can literally create an HTTP Load Balancer AND the back-end service farm for it in just a few minutes.

Even though I didn’t have yet the time to explore and experiment in depth with the APIs exposed by OpenStack, I feel that this would be the most powerful tool in the hands of an operator. Already there is a great variety of external tools and applications based on OpenStack services and aiming to streamline complicated solutions provisioning.

Looking for more

Even though it has only been a week of trying out OpenStack, and I still feel like I’ve only scratched the surface of what it can do, I’m sure that as I go deeper I will discover even more things that would enhance my productivity as an IT administrator and improve my ability to manage complex solutions in the infrastructure.

To paraphrase Jon Landau, “I’ve seen the future of service provisioning, and it’s name is OpenStack”.

Cloud 9: a sysadmin meets OpenStack was last modified: February 1st, 2016 by Michalis Giannos

]]>Reach for the Cloudhttps://www.stackmasters.eu/blog/reach-for-the-cloud/
Tue, 30 Jun 2015 11:15:24 +0000https://localhost/stackmasters/?p=94You’d think we’d all be accustomed to the Cloud by now. After all we’ve been hearing about Cloud technologies, Cloud this and Cloud that for over five years. But this is quite far from the truth when it comes to the enterprise Cloud. See, while consumers were first to embrace Cloud services, which for them […]

You’d think we’d all be accustomed to the Cloud by now. After all we’ve been hearing about Cloud technologies, Cloud this and Cloud that for over five years. But this is quite far from the truth when it comes to the enterprise Cloud.

See, while consumers were first to embrace Cloud services, which for them were mostly just web apps (like Gmail) or something “out there” that backups their data (like Dropbox), for enterprises it was a much slower ride.

Most businesses, even now, have only relegated some secondary and mostly trivial services to the Cloud (e.g. adopting Google Apps for Work or collaboration tools like Jira or Asana). And while startups have eagerly adopted IaaS offerings like AWS and Azure, established enterprises have been much more reluctant.

The thing is that the new Cloud model is not just another option, but brings with it a whole new approach that requires a mindset shift — that is, if we want to take full advantage of what it has to offer.

In the process we should also get rid of some misconceptions about the Cloud too.

A lot of managers for example (and even some engineers) believe that the Cloud is some kind of ultimate infrastructure technology that will magically solve any and all availability and performance issues.

That’s not what the Cloud offers. That’s not what any technology offers, to be frank: there’s no silver bullet.

What the Cloud does offer is increased abstraction, the closest thing to “magic” we have in IT. Increased abstraction is what enables your 15-year old nephew to program in an afternoon what would have take a team of IBM scientists several months in 1960.

This increased abstraction of the Cloud provides admins and dev ops with the tools to proactively manage, provision and deploy machines, with advanced monitoring, reproducibility, and freedom from vendor lock-ins.

I’m talking about features such as:

abstraction of resources, that lets you handle heterogenous vendor-independent infrastructure and mixed architectures with ease,

workload migration/evacuation, that enables you to handle updates and route around problems with minimal impact to the users while minimising maintenance windows

centralised reporting, giving you insightful views of system health and performance that assists operations management and decision making

systematic infrastructure design/blueprints through code, while enable standards-based know-how sharing among IT teams

And while both high and low ends of the spectrum (Fortune-500 enterprises and agile startups) have already embraced the Cloud for all the above traits, there is an enormous amount of enterprises in between that are traditionally reluctant to embrace new technologies, going instead with what they believe to be tried-and-tested traditional IT procedures.

Well, it’s 2015 already. Those procedures have indeed been tried and tested ― and they have been found lacking.

The Cloud is not some novelty to be approached cautiously anymore, it’s the emerging new standard way of doing business. Of course there are a lot of things to be cautious still: not all Clouds are alike, and embracing the Cloud only to find yourself locked-in to some proprietary vendor Cloud platform kind of defeats the purpose.

That’s why we betted our company in OpenStack, the industry standard Cloud platform sponsored by world leading vendors like Cicso, IBM, HP, Dell, RedHat, Backspace and Canonical, that we believe to be the optimal solution for businesses of any size.

OpenStack is Open Source and has the support of multiple vendors, letting you have full control of your cloud, with broad support for enterprise level virtualisation (from KVM and VMWare to Docker) allowing you to leverage existing products and solutions used at your company.

OpenStack also eliminates perpetual licensing costs and is free of byzantine pricing schemes.

And with its simple and intuitive web management interface, makes provisioning, managing and operating your infrastructure a piece of cake and empowering scaling-out, allowing administrators and operators to respond quickly to any business demand.

As for support, an OpenStack solution hits all the right keys, as it’s both available as Open Source and based on an industry standard with huge support from vendors, consultants and enterprise support shops big and small ― not to mention the availability of a vibrant grassroots community.

As we already noted, companies of both huge and tiny scales have already embraced the Cloud. Large Fortune-500 companies use Cloud based services to streamline, simplify and empower their infrastructure. Small, agile, startups practically live in the Cloud, as it offers them the ability to tap resources on demand and compete with big, established, players.

It’s time for enterprises between those two extremes, small, medium and large, to reach for the Clouds.

After that, the sky is the limit.

Reach for the Cloud was last modified: October 1st, 2018 by Thanassis Parathyras